Cows And The Earth’s Magnetic Field

27 August, 2008by Amit Varma

My fondness for cows is well known, especially in steak form, but even I would never contemplate research of this nature:

Cows can sense Earth’s magnetic field, scientists say. German scientists using satellite images posted online by the Google Earth software programme have observed something that has escaped the notice of farmers, herders and hunters—Cattle grazing or at rest tend to orient their bodies in a north-south direction just like a compass needle, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Studying photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds from around the world, zoologists Sabine Begall and Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen and their colleagues found that two out of every three animals in the pictures were oriented in a direction roughly pointing to magnetic north.

The resolution of the images was not sufficient to tell which ends of the cows were pointing north, however, the report said.

Amit Varma is a writer and podcaster based in Mumbai. He has been a journalist since 2001, and won the Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2007 and 2015. He writes the blog India Uncut and hosts the weekly podcast, The Seen and the Unseen.